Here are the basic internet promotions or properties that you should have established for your business:

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• Search Engines: A Website and or Blog that can be found by your customers

• Search Directories: Account in Google Places, Yahoo Maps, Bing Maps

• Multi-Media: YouTube, Podcasting and Pinterest (Images)

• Social Media: Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn

• : A Mobile Website and/or a Mobile Apps

• Publication: Kindle and Traditional Publication

• Public Relations: Online News and Press Releases

• Online Communities: Online Forums and Bulletin Boards

When your customers are looking for information in the search engines they typically use Google.  Google accounts for about 65% of all searches done on a daily basis.  When they do their search, most people don’t look past the first ten search results, as about 71% of all clicks happen on the first page alone.  That means that if you are going to have a website, and you want it to be seen by your potential customers, you are going to need to do something to be one of the 71% of websites that are found for your keywords.

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For example, if you are plumber in Chicago, you want people to see your website when searchers go to Google and type in: “plumber in Chicago”.  But then, you have to also think about all of the other things that people might type in if they have a plumbing problem. 

SEO is a time consuming process, but a consultant who is really working with you and looking out for your business can help you to be visible to your customers.  When you are approached by someone who says that they can do SEO for you, you will want to make sure that you know what keywords they intend to work on before you pay any of your money.  This would be a simple question to ask them: what keyword do you want to attempt to make me visible for? 

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Your follow up question is equally as important.  You should ask about how many searches those keywords get on a regular basis.  If your consultant intends to make you first for a keyword that isn’t searched, this will not do you any good and will be a waste of your money.  No consultant can guarantee you business by getting you to the top of Google.  However, they can get to places where your customers are searching if they are willing to do the work.

The corporate website tends to be used for official news and press releases.  The tone tends to be formal (if a company has a formal tone at all).  It is the showcase of what your company is and what it does. If you have hours of operations, if you have sale pricing or if you have news that you need to convey to your customers, this is the place where you will let them know what is happening.

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However, that probably won’t cover all of the keywords that your customers are interested in.  In fact there will be 1) some keywords that are important for you to have a presence on and 2) some for you to have products and services ready to buy.  The keywords that indicate that customers are ready to buy tend to use covered by a business’ website.  Those keywords that customers or prospects search with when they are only at the ‘showing interest’ stage are typically best covered by a blog.

In our last lesson, we discussed how you can use blogging to your advantage to cover keywords that people use when they are not quite ready to make a purchase.  For those keywords that indicate that people are ready to buy your products and services, we would want to use your corporate website to cover them.  Basically, we need to be able to tell the difference between those keywords that prospects use when they are ready to buy and those keywords that prospects use when they are just “kicking the tires” or investigating your products and services.

When people are ready to buy there are certain ways that they might indicate that, by what they actually type into the search engine bar.  The marketing community calls these buying keywords.   When you are paying for SEO services, you want to make sure that you optimize your site for as many buying keywords as you can...

As we have said, you should attempt to be in every place online that your prospect is. And now that the internet has become a medium to connect with people, consumers and businesses are spending more time on social media websites and platforms. 

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Social media simply describes those sites where people connect on a personal level.  Social media sites are not like blogs or regular websites.  They are platforms that encourage users to share with a community of people that they are connected to online.  There are over 100 social media sites in regular use.  Some of the largest and most recognized platforms among the 100 are:  1) Facebook, 2) Twitter, 3) LinkedIn, 4) Google+ and 5) Pinterest.

Your business needs to have a presence on Facebook, no matter how small, no matter how active. At the time this course is being written, Facebook receives about seven billion visits per month and has about 900 million members/users.  That means that regardless of what you are selling, it is likely that one, if not all of your prospects does something on Facebook. 

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Business’ point of interaction is Facebook’s Fan Page system.  Companies are allowed by Facebook to set up an account on the network where they can post content about their business and brand.  You don’t have to maintain a personal account to set up a fan page.  All that you’ll need t do is to go to the website Facebook.com and create a page for your business.

Twitter will allow you to connect with customers and prospects in much the same way as you will be doing on Facebook.  What’s different about Twitter is that you can only use 140 characters at a time.   For some this is a quite limiting aspect of the platform.  However, the site has carved out a unique place among the networks where using those few characters actually encourages MORE interaction.

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The key to utilize twitter effectively is to make use of it as a conversation with those who decide to connect with you.  Twitter is basically real time interaction and a way for connections or ‘followers’ to talk to a decision maker about those things that concern them.  You may want to use it as a way to discuss your company’s perspective on a recent event...

The LinkedIn network was designed for professional connections and relationships.  Of all of the social networks it is the least purely social platform.  Most if not all of the activity revolves around your company or your activity with a company.  Although it is focused and its population is the smallest, the activity is productive for executives who have a need to meet others in business. 

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Most of the interaction on LinkedIn occurs on the individual level, even though companies are permitted to set their own presence there.  It is important to note that while there may be consumer activity on LinkedIn, it is extremely limited and rare.  Most of connecting between parties occurs on the professional level.

The Pinterest social network is for businesses that can use visuals to interact with their customers, connections and prospects.  It differs from Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn in that the primary mode of communication is through the posting (called pinning in Pinterest) of images and videos.  At this point most of the connections that people make on Pinterest come from Facebook in particular.

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To take advantage of the viral nature of Pinterest, you will need to think about the visual nature of your business.  Are your products and services visual in nature?  Or perhaps you may want show pictures of your staff in action.  In some cases, companies that are successful using Pinterest showcase those things that the staff finds interesting.

As you have been going through the past few lessons on social media, hearing the words:

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1) Engagement

2) Interaction

3) Consistent

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You may have been thinking about where you would find the time to do this across all five of the major networks.  And then, when you think about every other component of the marketing plan that we have discussed, it can be overwhelming.  A number of business owners give up before they set a plan to use the social networks to their advantage because of the amount of work that they (rightly) foresee it taking to be done for maximum effect.